


Awakening

by orphan_account



Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, Rotkäppchen | Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dark, Dubious Consent, F/M, Other, Porn Battle, Retelling, Revisionist Fairy Tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-06
Updated: 2012-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-30 16:59:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>But along the lighter path I have met grandmothers and mothers, silk-dressed, schedules enforced like chronometers, baskets latched too tight to sneak from, none of them possessed of the bone-deep daring that makes residence in the woods a fantasy. </i>
</p><p>Little Red Riding Hood has lived in the woods longer than the Big Bad Wolf ever will.</p><p>Prompt: Red/Wolf, reversal, prey, treat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awakening

I went because no one told me otherwise. The trees ran along the stream, their leaves clean and shady above me, the water under clear and merry as only spring streams know how to be, driven by the rush of something greater than themselves falling into woods so quaint and small.

Do what your ancestors did, it has been said, but many an ancestor wandered in as little-informed as I. The eldest of my brothers, it has been said, loped in one day and faced his fate with honor. We are a celebrated family.

Where the path broke at the old crossroads, where a hundred dozen children have run from the likes of me, I considered the routes before me. The darker choice, where roses have ceased to grow, made my skin feel loose. I have been warned of what lies there by parents who felicitously never remembered to tell me that road winds off the rim of the earth. Sirens meet you at the end. But along the lighter path I have met grandmothers and mothers, silk-dressed, schedules enforced like chronometers, baskets latched too tight to sneak from, none of them possessed of the bone-deep daring that makes residence in the woods a fantasy. The clay of that road, too, congeals under my belly when I wriggle under the tree roots, and the sand blinds my eyes if I keep my snout to the ground where news carries, the stench of human houses hazing my mind long before any wolf can see them. We wolves like to know what we leap into even (especially) if there will be blood.

I was not disappointed. It was a long walk under the chiaroscuro of the trees mottling my road. Rocks cast shadows like teeth. My head wandered, perhaps, into the canopy, beyond the end of the path and to mermaids I could crunch in my jaws like salmon. The glint of their scales still cinctured my vision when I came upon the cottage.

Cottages, you see, are not supposed to squat at an unmarked place on the path, far from any liminal fork. I opened the door anyways— wolves like to see what might kill them before it comes— and my next surprise of the day opened her mouth to a very white smile.

Her teeth had ground down, as those of creatures who normally feast on stones will do, but I was taken aback. Ideas of honor deserted me like a dog deserts a man who forgets to feed it. Her axe was sharp as any I had ever seen, the edge of my fear honing its edge and the weight of my dropping stomach lending it gravity, and it was pointed unerring at my naive wolf's heart. 

Stay, she told me as though I were her domestic pet. Did you come for dinner? The table behind her was laden with food, all of it as mottled as her rust-specked cloak.

My, what a big appetite you have, I said. My sisters have never complimented my sense of humor. Can I bring you something to eat?

Muscles corded down her limbs. In a heartbeat she could throw that axe and hang my pelt on her wall, where many of her winter coats already hung, their fur matted without cleaning. You, she said, have brought me a delight already.

My, what big arms you have, I said. Would you mind putting down your metal? I am only afraid that it is silver, and the winter has already made so many of my clan sick beyond healing. I come in peace.

Her freckles stretched up her cheeks. You have your teeth and claws, wolf. Intruder, would you sheathe them to eat in my house? She held out her hand scarred with past excursions with wolves and let me slink closer like a defeated thing, my tail scraping the skeletons littering her her rugs. The rugs, I remember, had leaked pink trails into the dirt. I followed one closer and closer to her and sunk my teeth into her wrist, determined not to go with a whimper.

She giggled. Hit my ears with her spare rose-red cloak, bundled and tasseled so I knew it would leave bruises about my head. I almost like you, wolf. She put the axe blade under my throat, so I had to press onto my back legs like a circus bear to not have the steel of it crack through my jugular. I swallowed the way that girls have swallowed all of history when faced with wolves older and savager than they, for in her face was more madness than ever in the mouth of a wolf hungry to eat. Will you be good, my once-mistaken wolf? Do I need to cut you open?

She told me to lie belly-up. She had expertise with the axe, and it hurt scoring my stomach, thirteen lines: one, she said, for every beast who has tried to kill me. She tied her cloak over my eyes and slashed open my muzzle, the pads of my paws (so I wouldn't leave until she was done with me, she said, her foul breath gusting out of her mouth a clawsbreadth from my own), drew her name line by line under my tail until I couldn't feel when she split herself open on me it hurt so much.

Red Cap, she carved. Night Cap. Her handwriting compared badly to wolfscratch, but she had her attention elsewhere and mine caught in her lupine eyes. Her legs squeezed the breath out of my cries as she lowered herself onto me and her axe into my flesh. I lay back and kept my claws to myself, wondering what had happened to the days my parents told me tales of, when it was only the huntsmen that had ever wanted to fuck with me to death.

**Author's Note:**

> All kinds of feedback are welcome and appreciated.


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